Awakening
by Onikoneko83
Summary: Some people were not made for this society. Some can not fit no matter how hard the masses around them try to press them in. Some find a way to escape. Danya was one of them. What she wasn't ready for, though, was what waited for her beyond the snares


"Hello?...Hello!"

A tinny voice echoing through her headset. Impatient, not understanding, uncaring about the person on the other end of the line. Danya found herself staring in an hypnotic apathy at the computer screen, which now showed the faceless voice's name, number, and address. It was all dreadfully important information for the business she worked for. But for her, the information was as useless as the products it was her job to sell. So she stared at the screen, wondering what the words contained within were supposed to mean to her.

To her left, to her right, in front of her, and behind her, sat fellow inmates. The walls of their cells were a uniform pale green. Containing walls, a mere meter and a half tall each, yet still doing their job. The sounds of the inmates were dulled by the equally dull viridian barriers, from a cacophonic din, to a distracting murmur. The inmates' cells were all alike. A broken, choppy sea of green; slowly drowning its prisoners under persistent waves of babbling voices. The prison was a madhouse, but one that worked to promote, rather than cure the afflictions of those within. The insanity skulked through the hideous green cells, infecting the occupants without bias or mercy.

None could escape the entangling clutches of the madness. All newcomers to the sanitarium, if not mad beforehand, quickly succumbed to the overwhelming power of the insidious disease. The madness manifested itself in a myriad of different forms. Some of the victims entered a bitter depression, sullenly lashing out at those on the other ends of the phone lines who triggered their misplaced ire. Others rigorously denied the existence of such a madness, seeking to demonstrate their own sanity with spirited displays of feigned cheerfulness and unconcern, demonstrating their insanity all the more obviously by their desperate attempts to cover it up. Danya was surrounding by the mad. Her neighbors were strangers to sanity. She shared in the madness, but did not share their attitude towards it. She did not deny that her madness existed, neither did she throw herself into the madness, fully immersing herself from the sight of sanity. In the sea of drowning victims, she was the only one who neither denied the sea existed, nor willingly succumbed to the smothering waves.

The voice on the other end of the line had given up and hung up. Danya was now staring at a blank screen. She thought about the next call waiting in line, and the call after that. A long line of people, unwittingly waiting to hear her voice. Some would yell at her. Some would deny her offer in a friendly, condescending fashion. Many would hang up on her without a word, signaling that her existence was not worth acknowledging to them. In the end, could she really blame them? She was just as much a faceless voice to them as they were to her. She could die tonight, and they would not as much as twitch an eye in recognition. This would be the case even if she had not called them at all, granted, but then, she would be defended by her own ignorance of their existence. Now, every day, several hundred more names were added to the list of people who could care less whether Danya lived or died.

Her finger hesitated, hovering indecisively over the key that would bring her the next call. Put her on display for the next client. Ready to receive the abuse, pity, anger, aggression, sympathy, or patronizing that they felt the anonymous, feminine voice deserved. Something of a spark of rebellion rose with her. The quavering finger returned to her lap. The faceless judges could wait. The pen, lately vacant on the desk, returned to her hand, and new words began to form on the notebook that slowly warmed in her lap.

"Danya Whan, please report to Quality Assurance."

The pen halted. The rebellious spark, feebly attempting to grow, was snuffed out. Numbly, Danya rose. Filtering ephemerally through the writhing torrent of sound. Around the corner, a temporary reprieve from the sanitarium proper, only to be placed in isolation. Prodded and interrogated. Danya was not disappointed. She sat, a mask of concerned placidity on her features. It was explained to her that her enthusiasm was lax. If she wanted to be a productive employee of the company, she needed to show more energy. She was to engage the clients, show them the features and benefits of the products they offered. Utilize professional language and explain the values of the product, all while making second attempts.

Danya nodded, her mouth framed words of reassurance. Puppet-like, she affirmed her dedication to the principles of the Compton Telemarketing Company. She promised that her less-than-optimal performance was a temporary lapse of good judgment and positive attitude. She allowed herself to mindlessly drone the vacuous catchphrases that her employers utilized to give the inmates of the madhouse a false sense of importance.

Mollified, her interrogators let her return to work.

She picked up the phone, allowing the next call.

This person unleashed a long string of expletives at her before she could demonstrate the features and benefits of the product to them. The call was ended by the client viciously slamming the receiver down in the ear. She had managed to speak four words to him.

Seven hours later, the sanitarium disgorged its occupants to the world outside. A small swarm of the insane scuttled across the pavement, still cooling from the day's heat. Jovial voices echoed back and forth, expounding on grand plans to spend their temporary freedom becoming dangerously inebriated, or engaging in pointless copulation. Danya trailed behind them. Her black hair, unmanageable in the best of times, reflected a jagged, uneven outline in the wan moonlight. Bouncing, giggling psychopaths flitted past her. They skipped onward to errands, both pointless and disgusting, that Danya wished she didn't have the displeasure of knowing. A disorganized whirlpool of music filled the lot as various vehicles started up. From the left, some country music explained to Danya that someone's omnipotent deity blessed him because he used a JohnDeere tractor to till his farmland. From the right, a hip-hop artist expounded on the philosophical concept that life cannot be considered truly complete without the possession of money and hoes. A car started in front of her, and some forgettable performer from the royalty of the court of pop informed her that she had met a boy at a party yesterday that she knew would be her soulmate for life.

Danya shut herself in her car, isolating herself from the unpleasant world outside. For a few minutes, she indulged in the comfort that the silence brought. She waited until the parking lot had mostly cleared before she opened her windows. Sparse voices rode in on the damp night air. She twisted the key, and before the voices could entangle her, the music started. Voices, crickets, and silence alike were banished from her car as the twisted, unnatural strains of VNV Nation coruscated through the interior of the vehicle. A few more seconds of stillness. A transition from a state of comforting numbness to…something else. A throbbing beat emerged in the chaotic whirlpool of sound. Danya's body jerked as the sound grew louder. An arm traced a seemingly random pattern through the air. Danya's eyes closed and her head twisted about like one possessed. Soon, her whole body writhed in the front seat of the car. Her movements looked awkward, her gangly limbs shifting rapidly between unnatural shapes and arrangements. Always, though, her movements corresponded to the thick, compelling beat of the music. A single tear found its way through the barrier of Danya's closed eyes. A day's worth of accumulated stress and helpless desperation fought for release.

Words joined the musc. Danya's convulsions slowed. Slowly, regretfully, her eyes opened. The world she wished she didn't know, was still out there. The music was naught but a fragile barrier against an unwelcome reality. It was a weapon to fight it with, but she could not fight for long before becoming too exhausted to continue.

"…If I could change your mind, I would save you from the path you follow…"

A cool breeze through the open window. Careless field s and unconcerned trees. Pale light cast by a reclining moon segregated misty opalescence from darkened vacuity.

"…And I still hear you scream, with every breath, with every single motion…"

Danya neared the street that would escort her all the way to the driveway of her house. The road past it, like the road leading to it, was dark, empty, and spectral. But it was comforting. Danya saw herself continuing past her road, following this paved trail. She escaped the smothering embrace of the trees. Her pale body would soak in the moonlight as she left her vehicle behind. She would walk, run, and scream in the night until everything vital in her was sapped. A desiccated husk left by the side of the highway, wildly beautiful in its willing expenditure of life.

Danya turned down the street to her house. The spectral highway left behind.

No one was awake when she entered. Quietly, she cooked herself some noodles. The parents would not tolerate music at this time of night. Alone she cooked. Alone she ate. Alone she slept.

------------------------

Sunlight beat oppressively down. Danya tried, ineffectually, to hide her pale legs from the searing brands. She sat in the parking lot, watching the seconds tick inexorably downward towards her re-incarceration at the telemarketing company. The sun continued to harass her as she walked across the simmering pavement. An initiation for those that were condemned to be among the insane that worked inside. Danya thought of stopping at the doors, turning, and walking back to her car. She would take the blanket in the trunk to protect her from the sunlight, and walk. As noon turned to dusk, the sparse building around her would morph into fields. She would walk for days, always to the east, to the city.

Danya opened the door and walked in. She was halted before she could take five steps.

"Listen, um, I really need my money."

Danya blinked, "Money?"

Carly nodded gravely, "The telly won't pay for itself, you know."

"I already gave," Danya said hesitantly, "one hundred dollars towards it…"

"One hundred isn't enough to pay for a telly, sweety," Carly said pointedly.

"But one hundred dollars was what I owed you," Danya replied.

Carly looked petulant, "But you said you'd help, and you still owe me for the dolls."

Danya was confused, "Dolls?"

"…anyways, I'll talk to you later, Jeff is waiting for me."

"…You mean the dolls I paid for with my own money?" Danya asked the closing door with rising anger.

The day did not improve much after that encounter. She wasn't reprimanded by quality assurance this time. Instead, she was forced to wear a mast of cheerful insanity. The clients, apparently, preferred that she pretend that she enjoyed their picking her apart. She sat in the corner of the breakroom, pointedly ignoring the stares directed at her, her pale skin, her lack of make-up, her clothing. She buried herself in a Tanith Lee novel, trying to adopt the disconnected apathy of the protagonists.

She sat in the bathroom stall, a razor in her hands. It had been months since she had willingly broken the surface of her skin. That had been at her old job. The scars had faded to near-imperceptibility now. Perhaps it was time to give them form a second time. Maybe she should cut a little deeper this time. Maybe deep enough, and wide enough, so she could reach a finger underneath and pull out whatever it was that prevented her from joining in the happy, vapid ignorance shared by everyone else here. Danya found herself wondering what a slow, bleeding death would feel like. She imagined a tingling numbness overtaking her extremities. A sloshing, buzzing filling her ears, encompassing her oxygen-starved head. As her face dipped towards the floor, she could hear a slowing, intermittent murmur. Her heart, weakening, feebly attempting to circulate blood that was no longer there.

The razor fell to the floor, unstained. Danya rubbed her head. If she were to die now, it would be admitting that the sanitarium had won. That she was not mentally strong enough to weather its tortures and mental degradations. Why would she kill herself, in a grand gesture that no one would comprehend, let alone sympathize with, and reveal that she was too spineless or inept to simply walk out?

She returned to work. Her new resolves lasted nearly an hour before the black, hopeless apathy had yet again hunter her down. The next break she had, Danya returned to the stall. The razor was gone. Danya briefly considered asking someone where it had gone. But that would require socialization, and being asked uncomfortable questions.

The asylum was opened again, two hours later. Danya tarried for even longer in the parking lot before leaving. She imagined herself staying a bit longer each night. One day, she would never leave at all, but would rather be a permanent resident of the asylum.

The car was low on gas. A forty dollar purchase she wished she didn't need. But she had to make a half-hour drive, both ways, each day, for the privilege to work in the asylum. She pulled into the cheerfully lit petrol station. The fumes of the petrol curled nauseatingly around Danya. The acrid stench bit into her pallid skin. It was a clinging, violating miasma, and she was its prisoner, its slave. It was filthy, detestable, harmful, but she returned to it time and time again. It was the repulsive aura of her job given physical form. Pointless, and affront to what she held as valuable.

"But it's necessary if I want to keep living the way I do," she muttered.

"But if it makes you miserable, why would you even want to keep living the way you do?" said a voice of indeterminate gender.

Danya looked up sharply. He was on the other side of the island. Danya had only a vision of a gaunt, but youthful face. Muddied brown eyes. Nothing behind those eyes. There was nothing behind anyone's eyes, though, only the mask of false-emotion that everyone wore. Blonde hair, pale to the point of ivory, glowed dully in the midge-plagued light. A majority of his body was concealed by the rather incongruous, pastel blue minivan he was filling. Danya had a brief glimpse of a plain black shirt, torn in a deliberate fashion in several places.

"I wasn't speaking to you," Danya glared, but without any real feeling behind it.

"But I heard," came the even reply.

"Doesn't give you any right to intrude,"

"No, it doesn't, but I have anyway."

Danya stopped. A dull thunk indicated that her tank was full. She put the nozzle back, "Goodbye," she said, opening her door.

"Don't go."

Danya stopped again. She thought she wanted to ignore him. Perhaps, a while ago, she would have though him pretty. Now, though, those feelings were dead to her. The world was dead to her. A hollowed out shell, filled with lifeless automata. Easily led, all performing the rote tasks assigned to them. Her own body was dead. The passions inside her reduced to inert ashes. She had spent time on the internet, trying to find something that would awaken the jaded spirit within her. She would furiously masturbate to images ever more outré and taboo. Driven to little more than a necessary ritual. Pleasure was no longer the goal she strove towards. Her fingers worked for a few brief moments of oblivion. Moments that grew shorter with every repetition.

So, if she were as dead as the world around her, why did she take the final step and simply kill herself? She didn't want to die. There was still a ghost writhing deep within the machine. No longer feeling passion, but remembering it. Wanting it again. The ghost moved now, preventing her from simply ignoring the boy and leaving. It wanted to interact with the boy, the way it remembered.

"Why?" she asked.

"You forgot to pay."

The orange glow framed the charges, thirty dollars for continued patronage of the asylum. Danya grabbed her purse and walked inside. A mannequin plastered in make-up and sporting an artificial smile accepted her money, and burbled cheerful, vacant platitudes to her.

Danya met the boy again at the door, going to pay for his own poison. He was half a head taller than Danya. His attire, though equally as dark as Danya's, looked far more utilitarian in style and purpose. Not exactly dirty or grungy looking, like most of the inhabitants of this pathetically rural town. It was more as if function to a greater importance than form when it was designed.

"You never did answer the question," he said, brushing by her.

Danya found herself waiting for him back at her car. He had purchased some rather unhealthy looking snacks on top of this fuel. She didn't look up at him, "Music."

"Music?"

"It's why I go on living. Music, it feels good."

"Show me."

She didn't know why she was indulging him. A twist of the keys and she delicately slipped in a cd with "Video Audio Sensory Theatre" scrawled across the front. Her pale fingers brushed over the buttons, and soon, the LED indicated that track six was now playing. She turned the volume up, and the gas islands reverberated with the soft sounds of the cello. Her body, also, thrummed with the music. Slowly, Danya felt herself begin to twist, to writhe. This wasn't the chaotic babble of VNV Nation. This was slower, infinitely more sensual. Danya was being watching, by the boy. She didn't care anymore. He was a part of the mad, dead world that she had been granted a temporary escape from. He could watch all he wanted, she wouldn't care. Somehoe, feeling natural, Danya allowed her eyes to open.

The boy wasn't content to just watch her. He stood by her door, hand outstretched. Danya ignored it, closing her eyes again. She would not interfere with her body's natural movement.

Her arm, partially with the music, and partially of its own volition, found its way to the arm of the boy.

Her body tensed, as if wanting to be pulled out of the far too restrictive car seat. It was.

"…And when I am with you, there's no reason to pretend, that when I am with you, I feel flames again…"

Danya opened her eyes slowly. The lights of the gas station seemed to shine down with a brighter intensity than before. Or perhaps it was only because her eyes had been shut for so long. There were cool folds of cloth curled in Danya's hands. She twisted her head up slowly, blinking in the harsh glow. There was an exhausted lightness in Danya's muscles.

"You never did answer my question," the boy said.

"What do you mean?" replied Danya, "I told you already, why I can go on."

"But that wasn't what I asked," said the boy evenly, "Unless you're claiming that you have to keep living in the miserable fashion that you do or you'll never be able to experience the feelings music gives you."

"It would be much harder to fully enjoy it if I were jobless, homeless, penniless," Danya said.

The boy smiled, it was a sardonic grin, "You place far too much value on simple currency for one who has demonstrated such a potent, if well-hidden spiritual side."

"I don't place any faith in spirits," Danya said testily.

"Neither do I. But you don't have to believe in spirits to accept the fact that some people, including you, have the capability to be rather spiritual."

"What makes you think that I'd care to be spiritual?"

"Well, you seemed to be enjoying it just a minute ago," the boy replied.

"And that's what you call being spiritual?"

"Did it feel normal to you?"

"…No."

"Did it make you feel better?"

"…Yes."

"What else would you call it, then?"

"Brief," Danya replied, shutting the door and driving away before the boy could reply.


End file.
